The Smart Imaging consortium has been organized and financed by the MAGNET Program of the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) . The consortium consists of 5 industrial companies (SCD , Elbit systems, Elop, Newsight Imaging , Kaya instruments) and 6 research groups from 3 different academic institutions (Technion, Bar-Ilan, Ben-Gurion).  

 

The main goals of the consortium are to develop and bring to market innovative imaging technologies for vision-based applications such as autonomous systems. The consortium will develop sensors with emphasis on innovative digital Read Out Integrated Circuits (ROIC), simulation capabilities, detection and tracking of fast dynamic events, and the classification technologies needed for defense, security and commercial systems.

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The project is planned for 3 years in 2 phases. The first phase will be performed over an 18-month period, budget has already been approved and program already initiated.

The concept of initial processing in the focal plane at the ROIC level is actually taken from human visual systems. These are known for both excellent spatial sharpness and high temporal resolution. Dual focus on “sharpness” and “speed” is made possible through various processing streams that are already carried out in the retina.

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Similarly, in the Smart Imaging consortium, capabilities will be developed that will allow initial processing at the detector and ROIC level for various sensor types, focusing on special processing technology at the pixel level. This processing will be accompanied by the deep neural network based algorithms for classification of events at the edge sensor level. These developments will solve the communication bottleneck from mega-pixel edge sensors to the processing cloud by using smart information extraction. 

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The project started in August 2019 and  planned for 3 years in 2 phases